The Violence of Modernity and the Gandhian Alternative

Ramin Jahanbegloo

Modernity has often been seen in connection with the ideas of liberty, equality, progress and rationality. These concepts merged in the mottos of he Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and later on split up and expressed in the two political doctrines of liberalism and socialism. On the other hand, political and ideological figures such s Hitler and Stalin provoked a different perspective on the connection between ideals of the Enlightenment and political modernity. From a pessimistic point of view one can say that modernity also paved the way for twentieth century totalitarianism, namely Nazism, through its dreams about Volksgemeinschaft, holistic community and the final solution. In his post-modern approach Zygmunt Bauman shares this pessimistic view in order to explain the Holocaust, as a consequence of modernity and its Zweckrationalitat. According to Philip K. Lawrence, I his book Modernity and War: The Creed of Absolute Violence,  the leitmotiv of modernity has been Western civilization’s “dominion over other peoples and lands, the place of science in the construction and ordering of the polity, and the rise of technocratic and instrumentalist rationalism” (page 87).In other words, modernity’s essential elements of positivism, scientism and instrumental rationality became excuses to use extreme violence against those indigenous cultures who were not in the line of the Western ideology of progress. In promulgating the creed of “progress” modernity unveiled its more destructive consequences. To repeat what one of the characters of  Luchino Visconti’s film , The Conversation Pieces, says: “The price of progress is death”.

In today’s world, the consolidated effect of modernity, the picture of man as the rational autonomous individual endowed with free will, is complete. The individual is individualistic: self-interested, egoistic, clamoring for more and more power, wealth and social status. He has stopped thinking about the spiritual meaning of life. His life is divided between purposes which are contingently thrust upon him by his environment, requiring fulfillment with speed and efficiency which occlude any evaluation of their meaning for life as a whole. As MacIntyre in his most perceptive discussion of the contemporary scene observes: “Modernity partitions each human life into a variety of segments, each with its own norms and modes of behavior. So work is divided from leisure, private life from public life, the corporate from the persona. So both childhood and old age have been wrenched away from the rest of human life and made over into distinct realms. And all these separations have been achieved so that it is the distinctness of each and not the unity of the life of the individual who passes through those parts in terms in which we are taught to think and to feel”(After Virtue, Page 190). Moreover, the social no longer demands conduct in which human relationships are informed by virtues. Modernity which brought freedom from he authority of various non-secular traditions went too far and liberated the hidden greed lying curled up in the human heart. In this culture of greed-satisfaction , rational violence plays a role in the process of ideological brainwashing and the marginalization of those who refuse to surrender to power relations of dominant epistemic discourse. In short, the modern dynamic of civilizing process has created a close link between the modern individual personality and the political formation of he modern state. In this elation, most social historians and political scientists would accept the rough outline of what Norbert Elias has argued: a gradual intensification of self-discipline, a shift from social control based on public humiliation, neighborhood surveillance, priestly condemnation and fear to internalized norms and values. A central characteristic of Elias’s work is his heavy explanatory reliance on the monopolization of violence and lengthening chains of social interdependency. Elias argues o the basis of his material on aggression and manners that in the course of European history people gradually experienced a “civilizing process” in the sense of internalizing social constraints, becoming more self-disciplined, and managing their feelings and emotions in a more stable way. He also reminds us that nation-states only gradually emerged from the fragmented political landscape of the early Middle Ages, and that their emergence can be described as a process of the monopolization of violence and the centralization of authority. Elias makes Freud’s view of human psychological change in history one of the cornerstones of his historical sociology.  He never used “civilization” s a noun, but rather talked about a “civilizing process”, a way of looking at “civilization” that fits well with Freud’s thinking. Elias was acutely aware that the civilizing process could be reversed and lead to acute periods of decivilizing, such as World Wars and the Third Reich. As he says, the emergence of the modern state, with its monopoly on violence and the growing interdependence of its members, necessitated greater degrees of individual self-control. As Elias suggested, people began to modify their approach to everything from eating and scratching to spitting and sex. But the most important was that modern rationality used the violence of the state to punish so as to force citizens to act in a civilized manner creating a sort of pseudo-civilized citizen. Elias ‘s approach to the context of modern violence reminds us of Michel Foucault’s analysis of modern political institutions and modern juridical representations of coordinated forms of human interaction which have been instrumental in hiding and legitimizing a specific process of violent subjectivisation called “discipline”. Foucault’s position here is elaborated I relation to his account of the emergence and proliferation of disciplinary practices within multifarious institutions in the 18th century. His central concern in this analysis is not only with representative institutions, but with the emergence of what he calls “biopower”, a power of sovereignty over life and its consequences for the transformation of law and citizenship in liberal democracies. Foucault points out the duality of the political individual as subject shaped through normalizing practices and as a citizen with rights and liberties. What Foucault is aiming at by exposing the movement of power and violence within the structures of domination is to render this consolidation less effective and less dangerous. Power relations can neither be eradicated nor suspended, but their escalation into structures of violence can often be neutralized.

In modern political theories, the political is identified with the State. The idea of the State is often linked to the notion of an impersonal and privileged legal or constitutional order with the capability of administering violence and controlling the individuals. When political scientists turn to the history of political thought, they tend to acknowledge Machiavelli as the first thinker of State violence and The Prince, in particular, as the first treatise in political thought to infuse the contemplation of political affair with a spirit of raison d’etat. Machiavelli’s conception of politics I The Prince is quite clearly drawn from his understanding of an experience in the art of war. For him, politics, like warfare, is a vicious struggle to gain control, to dominate and to conquer opposing force. That is why in The Prince, Machiavelli advices his prince to “have no other aim or thought…but war and its organization and discipline” (Page 53). That art alone is necessary for glory in politics. The organizer of the Florentine civil militia also knows that there is no comparison between the armed and the disarmed man, success in war requires a knowledge of crafty assault as well as of armed combat. In Chapter 8 of The Prince  Machiavelli distinguishes between cruelty well used and cruelty abused. A well-used cruelty is an atrocity that is committed at a stroke , in order to secure one’s power. For Machiavelli, well-used cruelty would be a good moral decision in that it enforces the power of the Prince. I n fact, Machiavelli realizes the abused cruelty as useless because it would be detrimental to a state’s internal stability. If the Prince was to kill many people without reason, he would not gain the support of the people. Machiavelli’s  general view of violence in politics is closely related to his point of view on the human nature and this is actually where his analysis is close to that of Hobbes. For Machiavelli, man is dominated by his passions. He is acquisitive, shortsighted and imitative. His desires are unlimited and bear little relation to his abilities. This selfishness leads to conflict between those who desire to dominate and those who desire to be free from domination. Domination is itself the most powerful of emotional desires. The conflict is conducted both on the civil level between men on the international level between groups of men. Since conflict stems from the fundamentals of human nature, it is at least latent in all human societies and therefore inevitable. One of the fundamental concerns of politics for Machiavelli is the control and application of violence in the interest of the State. In other words, war and politics form an organic whole. While war is a political instrument, politics itself is warlike activity. We are all familiar with the famous dictum of Clausewitz that war is politics conducted by other, more violent means. This idea has also been adapted by Leninists in modern times.  The Leninists actually come closer to the original view of Machiavelli, which is that it is politics that is war conducted by other, less violent means.

Hobbes was also among the first modern political thinkers who recognized the role of violence in a creation and conservation of a public power. For Hobbes politics is a form of violence preserving and protecting the installment of a Leviathan which is the result of a rational choice of individuals against the universe of fear and instability. Through a theory of human nature, sovereign authority and political obligation, Hobbes ought to prove that the state must be regarded as the ultimate violence, both absolute and legitimate, in order hat the worst of evils, anarchy, might be permanently averted. In so arguing, Hobbes produced a political philosophy which is a fascinating point of departure for reflection on the modern theory of violence. Hobbes’ s political conclusions emphasize the necessity of a practically all-powerful and violent state to create the laws and secure the conditions of social and political life. Hobbes emphasizes a “general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceases only in death “ (Leviathan, Page 161).  The result is a constant struggle for survival. Therefore, individuals should surrender their rights by transferring them to a powerful authority which can force them to keep heir promises and covenants. A unique relation of authority results: the elation of sovereign to subject. A unique political power is created: the exercise of sovereign power. Hobbes’s arguments are extraordinarily impressive. The image of an all-powerful and violent Leviathan is a remarkably contemporary one. After all, most states in the 20th century were run by “mortal Gods”. (Hitler, Stalin and Mao). The constitutive role of the State, as a coercive power, with  hidden  or unhidden violence is also depressingly modern one.     For Hobbes, the main problem is to impose limits on the violence of all against all. The limits are effectively imposed by a sovereign with a monopoly of the right to coerce and the violent power to use that right. In other words, the Hobbesian sovereign is the exclusively authorized agent of violence in the society. The sovereign’s right to use violence on modern subjects is what makes him able to provide the security that eliminates the “state of nature”. Hobbes’s way out of a situation of civil war is to install the Leviathan , which is another form of administrated and rationalized violence. Therefore, the political consequence of man’s violent nature is an institutionalized violence, that s supposed to guarantee stability. The use of modern violence is logically constructed by Hobbes out of the observed condition of an individualist society where there is an equality of desires. As Hobbes says: “If any two men desire the same thing, which they  cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.. and they endeavor to destroy, or subdue one another” (Leviathan, chapter 11) . For Hobbes the only way to rationalize and to control the violence that is generated by equality of desires is to create a much stronger violence by covenant. The role of the modern state is to temper man’s self-interest and egoism.

Unlike Hobbes, Hegel’s conception of he state, or the “political state”, as he sometimes calls it, is first and foremost an ethical community similar to Aristotelian koinonia politike. By calling the state an ethical community, Hegel mans to endow it with something other than the mere use of violence or the power to coerce. Therefore, one is obligated to the Hegelian state not because of its violent nature but because it is a community of persons united around some shared conception of he good life. Yet, the Hegelian state cannot preserve its ethical unity without an external violence. In other words, war is for Hegel a moment in the ethical life of he state. In the Phenomenology, Hegel presents war as the power of the “negative”, in which the contingency of the material world is demonstrated. The positive value of war is that it transcends attachment to things by uniting men for the purpose of a common ideal(Phenomenology, Page 474). In the Philosophy of Right, war comes to have a specific function within the Rechtsstaat. It appears that war is no longer a means of founding, but of preserving, stages from the internal tensions generated by the marketplace and civil society. War  becomes, then, a school for the civic education of the modern bourgeois. War does this by providing a social context in which- by risking one’s life and therefore one’s place in civil society, family, and status as an ethical agent- it is possible for one to freely choose to advance the “universal” common interest in lieu of every “individual” personal interest. Put another way, Hegel believes that war is a vital moral resource because it relieves the deadly pressure arising from the divisions within civil society by bringing together all of the members and providing hem with the basis of an integrative existence as citizens of their state. Hegel’s account of war as an essential moral resource rests on three major claims. The first, the claim that being made self-conscious about one’s everyday values is ethically important. Second, hat the evils of “individualistic” civil society can be checked only by extremity of warfare. Thirdly, that full benefits of the communal perspective can be only obtained by obedience to the state. So if Hegel does not glorify war, he nevertheless seems not to have zealously related modern politics to the idea of nonviolence and peace. This is where mahatma Gandhi remains a relevant thinker.

Mahatma Gandhi remains a relevant thinker, not only because of his theory and practice of autonomy, but because of what he defended all his life, in other words, religious and political pluralism. Gandhi’s heroic break with religious fanaticism and his critique of a fashionable relativism, shifted the debate in Indian politics to the reach for a critical structure of universal norms for human action. Yet, it is difficult to say that Gandhi is a “system builder”. He is essentially a “pathfinder”. He is trying to find a path towards social and individual goals. This is why Gandhi’s philosophy is neither “utopian” nor “eschatological”. How can one define Gandhi’s philosophy? It could be defined simply as a “critical method” which tells us how to “enforce the civil society vis-à-vis the State. Let us refer to the formula he borrowed from H.D.Thoreau: “ that government is the best which governs the least”. In other words, Gandhi’s aim is to energize and vitalize the idea of “active citizenship” through “civic engagement” and “deliberative democracy”. But, there is no vitalization of “active citizenship” and “political pluralism” for Gandhi without the idea of “autonomy”. In Gandhi’s thought, this revitalization of the concept of autonomy goes with a critique of modernity. Gandhi is one of the resolute critics of modernity in the 20th century. In his view modern civilization is wrong to make a fetish out of the scientific rationality and ignore its limitations. Also according to Gandhi, modern rationality lacks a balanced theory of man, because it reduces morality to “self-interest” and undermines its “autonomy”. It does not value the full range of human freedom, but only the freedom to pursue self-interest. For Gandhi modern civilization is based on a flawed view and it suffers from several basic and interrelated limitations:

1-      It lacks moral and spiritual depth.

2-      It has no guiding principles which helps it to get out of a life devoid of meaning and purpose.

3-      It creates violence.

4-      It reduces wisdom to rationality.

In other words, Gandhi’s idea of freedom and autonomy is related to his critic of modern instrumental rationality. What Gandhi is saying is that modernity is sweeping away    everything through instrumental reasoning. In which way? By grasping an important truth and turning it into a falsehood. For Gandhi, the truth is the spirit of search for the truth. Because the spirit of truth is turned into falsehood, many of the achievements of the modern civilization has become forces of evil and the alternative modes of understanding the “cosmos” and the “self” have been swept aside. By saying this Gandhi is actually anticipating some  of our contemporary critics, by criticizing modern science and technology in his book Hind Swaraj. There are two points which bother Gandhi with modern science:

1-The fact that modern science is ethically neutral (Gandhi rejects the premise that science and ethics are separate).

2-The fact that modern science is dependent on a method that discards the “particular” (that is why Gandhi sees the universalizing impulse of modernity inhospitable to plurality).

So what is to be done? According to Gandhi, modernity must be checked and it must be tamed. How is it to be done? By re-conceptualizing the two concepts of “autonomy” and “freedom”, which Gandhi finds partly in the European civilization. This is because for Gandhi there is a difference between modern civilization and European civilization. In his writings Gandhi attacks the west without critcizing necessarily the modern civilization. We  can also understand this through his admirations for Socrates, Jesus, Tolstoy, Ruskin and Thoreau. He considers the last three as his “spiritual mentors”. In other words, Gandhi borrows important principles from modernity without letting modernity set the terms of his thought and discourse. This is why Gandhi’s critique of modernity and modernization is so unsettling. He interrogates modern science, modern economy, modern politics, with standards outside of themselves. This can be seen in his treatment of modern technologies. Gandhi challenges modern technology because he believes it diminishes "autonomy" and "freedom" and it destroys "self-governance". But he also challenges the Indian traditions, because he finds that obstacles to autonomy reside also in the tradition. Untouchability is a good example. Concerning “untouchability” Gandhi says: “We have become pariahs of the Empire, because we have created “pariahs” in our midst”. Gandhi fights for the right of untouchables as individuals and citizens though he never advocates the destruction of Varnashrama as a mode of social organization. Why does he take this initiative? Because his aim is not to destroy the concept of the four Ashramas or stages of life, which are useful according to him, but to awaken the Hindus about the limits of their traditions. He wants to awaken Hidus to their responsibilities toward their fellow citizens and to prepare them for a “swaraj” (autonomous) society.

Let us take a more precise look at the concept of “swaraj”. Gandhi used the term “swaraj” to describe a self-ruled and autonomous society.  For Gandhi, Swaraj implied not only formal independence, but also cultural and moral autonomy. In other words, under “swaraj” a community lives by its own truth. It can conduct its affairs in the light of its traditions and values while remaining alert to their limitations. Gandhi compares “swaraj” to a house with its windows and doors open. Quoting the Rigvedic prayer he says: “May the noble winds from all over the world blow into our house”. So “swaraj” ,for Gandhi, means “being open to others”, but at the same time it is the character we make for ourselves through our voluntary choices. In other words, Gandhi wants to think about our lives as “moral projects” for which we are responsible. On his account, autonomous persons are honest to their moral commitments when they are not governed by their instincts. Gandhi believes in this, because for him man is not only a biological nature, but also a moral nature. Individuals not only deserve freedom, but they have the duty to make themselves free by freeing themselves from domination and violence. To do this one has to “govern oneself” and “to be honest to oneself”. In this sense, in Gandhi’s philosophy, “freedom  from restraints” becomes “freedom through restraints”. There is a difference between the two theoretical formulations:

1- In the first formulation, restraint refers to the “other-imposed” restraints.

2- In the second formulation, restraint refers to the “self-imposed” restraints.

Self-imposed restraints means self-discipline, self-regulation and self –governance. So Gandhi defines freedom neither positively, nor negatively, but in a third way. As we know, Isaiah Berlin distinguishes between the two concepts of freedom. The first concept, the negative concept of freedom, addresses questions like: “What is the area within which the subject is or should be left to do or be without interference by other persons”? or “How much am I governed”? or “Over what area am I master”? The second concept, the positive concept of freedom, is concerned with questions which ask questions such as: “By whom am I governed”? or “Who is the master”?

For Berlin the negative concept is “freedom from coercion”, while the positive concept is the “ability of self-regulation”. On the contrary, for Gandhi, there is no self-realization without “self-restraint”. Self-restraint forms an indispensable part of Gandhi’s notion of “satyagraha” (non-violence). Self-restraint is, therefore, one of the pre-conditions of struggle for “swaraj” (autonomy). Gandhi emphasizes restraint on both individual and collective behaviour as a pre-condition for personal, collective and national freedom. Gandhi, therefore, refuses a restraint-free life which for him equals being a slave of one’s passions. Gandhi’s own life is a demonstration of how to regain the lost freedom through different methods. This lost freedom is not only “outward”, but also “inward”. The emphasis on the “inward freedom” forms part of Gandhi’s general theory. Gandhi says: “ I want freedom to make mistakes and freedom to unmake them”. In other words, freedom provides conditions of the growth of man. Growth of an individual results from an “inner reform” and an “inward freedom”. But what about the “outward freedom”? The “outward freedom” is a yardstick to measure the freedom of self within. In other words, the “inward freedom” refers to one’s relation to oneself, but the “outward freedom” refers to one’s relation to others. So the “outward freedom” exists in proportion to the “inward freedom” attained by individuals. Why? Because there can be no “outward freedom” without the realization of truth. And there is no realization of truth without self-realization and moral freedom. For Gandhi, moral freedom is the conquest of the demands of the senses and the appetite for the realization of the higher self. The ultimate aim of the realization of the higher self is the service of all. This what Gandhi calls “Sarvodaya”. Sarvodaya goes beyond the utilitarian principle of the greatest good of the greatest number. Sarvodaya seeks the greatest good of all members of the society. This is why Gandhi harmonizes the freedom of individual with the freedom of others. True democracy cannot be worked by 20  men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below by the people of every village. Therefore, fundamental to the Gandhian concept of political freedom is the idea that there is a basic contradiction between the freedom of the individual and the authority of the State. Gandhi zealously defends the freedom of the individual against the State, but relates to the freedom and welfare of the community. The indispensable condition of this social freedom and social welfare is the “tolerance of diversity” .It is the “unity in diversity”, what the Hindu philosophy calls “Advaita”, meaning the essential unity of man. Advaita goes beyond  Ahimsa(the refusal to destroy life). It implies a cooperative relationship with all life rather than competitiveness. The precondition of this cooperative relationship is “self-regulation”. For Gandhi there are 4 levels of self-regulation related and linked to 4 levels of “autonomy”. At each level we have the concept of “self-discipline” and “self-restraint”. 

1- We have “ autonomy” as national independence. The context of self-regulation here is  that the lack of restraint leads to colonialism and economic dominance.

2- We have “autonomy” as political freedom. The context of self-regulation here is that the lack of self-control on religious and economic groups leads to inequality.

3- We have “autonomy” as economic freedom. This is what Gandhi calls “Trusteeship” meaning holding excess property as a trust which narrows the gulf between the rich and the poor.

4- We have “autonomy” as moral and spiritual freedom. This is emancipation from the slavery of passions which leads towards self-purification.

So what can we conclude? We can conclude that in his quest to defend “autonomy” and “freedom”, Gandhi challenges both external and internal assaults. In relation with the external assaults, he is attentive to the harm that can come from institutional practices. As for internal assaults, he invites individuals to rule themselves against their weaker natures. They are 8 points here:

1- The individuals have to construct and cultivate a strong moral sense and construct the “good”.

2- Any construction of the “good” must include a place that recognizes the worth of others.

3- Therefore, the true source of freedom and right is “duty”. We have the duty to work to meet necessity.

4- We have to become self-governing agents.

5- If this is the case, Gandhi seeks to empower citizens rather than the State. If the state has a power, it is according to Gandhi, the power to dismantle injustice.

6- For this reason, Gandhi looks for the creation and cultivation of a public culture of citizenship that guarantees to everyone the right to opinion and action, as an alternative to a system of representation based on bureaucratic parties and state structures.

7- Gandhi is conscious about the fact that the cultivation of an “enlarged pluralism” requires the creation of institutions and practices where the perspective of everyone can be articulated, tested and transformed.

8- In this respect, Gandhi is one of the main political, spiritual and intellectual figures today who has the disturbing capacity to unsettle our fixed categories, to shake our inherited conceptual habits and to let us see our world in a new light.